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Comment by gessha | Hacker News Reader

It is interesting to consider the different developments happening with the big mobile orgs regarding the convergence computing paradigm:

- Samsung’s Dex has been out for a while - independent devs have been working on Linux “as an app” for some time - Android desktop interface in this article - Apple developing video output on iPhones - Apple working on a Macbook with a mobile chip

- another exciting thing is XR devices and mobile computing

- my concern is convergence computing will reduce the importance of desktop interfaces and the freedom we have to install whatever applications we want

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> my concern is convergence computing will reduce the importance of desktop interfaces and the freedom we have to install whatever applications we want

Yep, it absolutely will I expect. All the pieces are being or have been laid to build the new world where only a "trusted" device will be able to use the internet. Us nerds can still have our Linux, but it won't work with much of the internet because we won't be able to pass attestation.

Building to that future is exactly what I would expect from Apple, but Google doing so has surprised me. Google doing so is also the thing that will bring it to pass, so there's a special seed of hatred for them germinating in my heart right now. Hopefully I'm just being alarmist and paranoid, but I really don't think I am.

Some Refs:

Web Environment Integrity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Environment_Integrity

Private Access Token: https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=huqjyh7k

I think tech companies are realizing that the biggest "mistake" they have ever made was giving so much freedom to the desktop user. They hate that we can look into, modify, and delete files, hate that we can add custom-made software, and hate that we can identify and turn off tracking/telemetry. They realized this with the mobile platform and locked everything down, but by that time it was already too late.

Authoritarian governments (that is, what unfortunately all governments want to be) also love this, since if a few big companies control all computing, they can regulate them to control the public.

Fortunately, there are many computers already in the public's hands (which they can use to perform any computation without government restrictions and without paying/sending data to a company); but more and more people are switching to mobile platforms (and kids start out on these platforms) that I'm worried about the future.

If this trend continues, then self-hosting may become the final bastion of hobbyist FOSS.

I am somewhat hopeful that local AI will save us. It will be fairly easy to automate interacting with normie devices and services in the near future. It's not impossible to prevent it, but that will probably be annoying enough to the normies for them to reconsider. I see a future where the select few will still be able to use their free devices to operate the nonfree ones remotely, while incrementally taking back control with things like self-hosted tools.

I used to look up to Google and Googlers but that was a big mistake on my part because that only made the following disappointment ever so hurtful. All of the product killing, services/APIs lockdown and disrepair that has been their modus operandi over the last decade made them into just another corporate software company.

> Google doing so has surprised me Google are absolutely interested in this because more and more people are installing ad blockers and since their main game is advertisement, they can't allow that. The older the retired Google elites become and the less filtered their language becomes, the more you can peer into their minds and decisions leading up to now. Just look at what Eric Schmidt has been doing and saying.

>my concern is convergence computing will reduce the importance of desktop interfaces and the freedom we have to install whatever applications we want

The final nail was drilled into the coffin when a judge ruled Google a monopoly with Android a year or so ago.

You would think this is good but:

Apple was not found to be a monopoly with iOS. Why?

Because iOS doesn't allow any competitors, how can they be anti-competitive?

The judge explained this Google when they raised the issue, and just like that, Android wants to become iOS.

Good fucking job judge. 10,000 IQ ruling.

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